1. Technical Field
Embodiments discussed herein generally relate to the field of electronic devices and more particularly, but not exclusively, to wire line communications.
2. Background Art
As integrated circuit (IC) design and fabrication techniques improve, successive generations of IC devices continue to scale in size. Attendant with smaller IC dimensions is a drastically increased ability of such ICs to receive, transmit and process data. This has resulted in a rapid growth of technologies which rely upon high-volume wire line communications. However, the channel capacity of various interconnect media, although improved, has not kept pace with the increased processing speeds of ICs.
One approach to overcoming channel capacity limitations is to design devices which accommodate a larger number of hardware channels. However, additional channels require additional contacts for connector pins, which increase device size and limit compatibility with legacy connectors. Another approach is for a device to support a type of bidirectional communication referred to as full-duplex over a single signal line. Full-duplex communication typically involves a device transmitting a signal to another device via a signal line, where the transmitting is concurrent with the device receiving via the same signal line another signal from that other device. Full-duplex is to be distinguished from half-duplex bidirectional communication over a single signal line, which typically involves a device performing some form of time-division multiplexing to distinguish periods which are for transmitting signals via a signal line from other periods which are for receiving signals via that same signal line.
Implementation of full-duplex communication is complicated by the need of a device to distinguish signal components which correspond to the other device's transmission from other signal components, concurrently on the same signal line, which correspond to that device's own transmission. The effectiveness of techniques to distinguish such receive signal components from transmit signal components is often limited when, as with high data rates and/or long channel paths, receive signal components are significantly attenuated, as compared to locally-generated transmit signal components. Distinguishing receive signal components from transmit signal components may also be complicated by other factors such as the presence of signal reflections from connectors or other various channel imperfections. As a result, current and next-generation wire line technologies are limited in their ability to efficiently and reliably accommodate full-duplex communication according to conventional techniques.